Contents

Background

"The Messenger" is a barebones acoustic track featuring just vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, and subtle electronics. It's the final song on A Thousand Suns, as well. It's the first Linkin Park song to use open chords over powerchords and barre chords. It was as simple to record as it is on the surface; they didn't double vocals or do much editing to it. The raw performance is what they wanted to have on the record. Chester claims that the vocals of the song came to him immediately as he heard the first chords, which is rare for him. The opening lines of the demo were "You are a child with so many choices. The hardest always make us cry," which made Chester decide to write the song as a message to his kids.[1] Phoenix explained its position at the end of the record as being a movement away from the confusion of the rest of the record, so that the album ends on a personal and peaceful note.[2]

In the Meeting Of A Thousand Suns DVD, you can see a demo of "The Messenger" with a choir lending backing vocals to the song.

Versions

Note: Only the date of the very first release of each version is listed.

Live

"The Messenger" debuted at the second full show of the A Thousand Suns cycle in Buenos Aires, and was played with extra instrumentation from Rob, who played drums over the ending of the song. Chester also frequently led the crowd in a sing-a-long during the end of the song. In addition, Brad would add a capo on the 8th fret to make the song easier on Chester, though Chester, when he played the song solo, would occasionally move the capo around to make it even easier on himself. The song was only included in set A-1, with it following "The Catalyst" in the encore. It was also played after "The Catalyst" in the one-off Madrid setlist. Chester sang "No Woman, No Cry" over the intro of the song at the show in Tel Aviv, and led the crowd in a sing-a-long for Brad at the show in Brisbane. It maintained its position in set A during the 2011 North American tour, but it was added before "Iridescent" in San Jose. "The Messenger" was only played one more time as a "full performance", at the show in Los Angeles, where it opened the encore in favor of "Empty Spaces" and "When They Come For Me". At the A Thousand Horizons even in Tokyo, though, Chester sang "The Messenger" over a pre-recorded instrumental. It hasn't been played at a Linkin Park show since.